XVIII

The hall was beginning to empty; most of the guests who had planes to catch were on their way out, leaving few but those who were staying at the hotel. Sam finally extricated himself from the conversations he kept getting dragged into, and sought out his boyfriend.

He found Steve at one of the tables at the back, and hesitated when he saw who he was sitting with. Trust Steve. He had to try and make friends with everybody.

Still, Mallory didn't appear to have physically attacked him - in fact, she was grinning quite widely as she leaned towards him, animatedly telling some story or other. They seemed to be getting along just fine, although he supposed that could be something to do with the sizeable forest of empty beer bottles that had sprung up beside them.

Steve, as he listened, was absently spinning a bottle against the table with the fingers of his right hand, catching it every time it teetered off balance. Maybe Sam too was a little bit drunk, because he found himself vaguely mesmerised by the reflected overhead lights, and Steve's quick fingers.

It had been a long day. But the good kind of long day. He shook himself out of it, and approached the table in time to catch the last few words of Mallory's tale.

"-nearly burned down the White House."

"Yeah, I heard about that," Steve smirked, and as his gaze flickered up from the spinning bottle and locked Sam's. "Hey," he said warmly, in that way that still seemed to make his stomach drop.

"Hey," Mallory echoed, her sharper tone closer to a sound of objection than a greeting. But then the corners of her smile turned up. "Talking about you, not to you," she scolded him.

"Yeah. Buzz off, get us some more drinks," Steve directed laconically.

Sam blinked. "Well, this is... disconcerting. I appear to have become the third wheel in my own relationship."

"It could only happen to you, Spanky," Mallory told him.

Steve shot a sidelong smile at her. "Like quite a lot of things, if Mallory's to be believed."

"She's not," he refuted quickly. "She's a liar. Pathological. It's very sad." Mallory stuck her tongue out at him.

"Hey! Garçon! Still waiting on those drinks," Steve ordered.

He crossed his arms defensively across his chest. "Okay, now you're just teaming up to ritually abuse me."

Mallory linked arms with Steve across the table. "It's the beginning of a beautiful friendship."

He wasn't sure if he was supposed to consider this development a good thing or not, but suddenly, he was afraid. Very afraid. He turned away from the table. "I'll... just go get those drinks," he decided, and beat a hasty retreat.

She was hardly in the mood for company, but long-ingrained good manners made her smile at her ex-husband's assistant. "Hello, Margaret."

"Mrs.-" Margaret stumbled in embarrassment over the using name until Jenny gave her a small smile of acknowledgement. "-McGarry," she finished awkwardly. Jenny had kept her married name. Leo hadn't done anything so awful that she wanted to be disassociated from him, and it wasn't as if she had plans to go scouting for a replacement husband anytime soon.

She gave the tall redhead a wry look. "I assume he sent you to check on me?" How like Leo, to handle his private life by proxy.

Margaret shrugged awkwardly. "He wanted to make sure he didn't upset you."

"I'm not upset."

She wasn't; just very, very tired all of a sudden. When she'd been a girl, Jenny had been told that loving somebody made everything easier. It hadn't taken her very long to realise it wasn't true. The love had never worn out, but it had taken so much effort, so much trying to make things work.

And finally, she'd had enough. She'd held it together as long as duty had demanded it, but in the end, something had needed to give.

She was a divorced woman now, and able to keep the better memories of her married life safe where the daily grind of little disappointments and missed opportunities couldn't whittle them away. But there were other memories too. Memories of the not so good times.

She had every sympathy for her ex-husband's life-long struggle, and she loved Jed Bartlet more than she could probably ever have expressed for being there to help him claw his way back up. But she was the one who'd raised a daughter through it all, and sooner or later sympathy had to take a back seat to what you needed and deserved for yourself and for your family.

Oh Leo, why do you do this to yourself? Why?

She knew why, but that wasn't the same as understanding. Maybe you couldn't ever understand if it wasn't your own soul slipping away into the bottle.

Margaret shifted her feet. "It's been... a difficult time," she said hesitantly. "With Charlie and the president, and..."

"I know," said Jenny, although probably her knowledge only touched on the surface of issues that were central to her ex-husband's world. She still understood. Leo was like a flawed diamond; the strongest, most unyielding man she had ever known, but hit him in exactly the right place and you could still make him shatter. And though others might cut themselves on the shards, he was always and ultimately the real victim of his own self-destruction.

"Things were bad for a while, but he's come through it," Margaret continued. She looked the older woman in the eye seriously. "He's been amazingly strong."

Jenny gave a small, melancholy smile. "You don't have to tell me that."

"No," she said solemnly. "But maybe you should tell Leo that."

She smiled quickly, then straightened up and walked away, leaving Jenny to digest that.

His second oldest daughter approached him across the near-empty ballroom, and he felt the familiar stab of contradictory emotions. Delight, and wonder - the delight and wonder that had stirred in him for every one of his daughters since they were no more than an added roundness to their mother's figure, and always would - but also confusion, dismay and disappointment. Not the tiniest fragment of it, whatever she might think, directed at Ellie.

He'd failed his middle daughter somehow. Jed still wasn't sure exactly how he'd started down the path that had left so much distance between them, but he cursed himself for it. If only he'd been a better father, been there for her when she needed him, tried harder...

He saw that she was upset, and moved instinctually towards her, shedding the indulgence of self-recrimination for more pressing concerns. "Ellie? Eleanor, what's wrong?"

"I'm sorry, daddy," she said miserably. "For... for Jeff. I shouldn't have brought him. I'm sorry."

"That's okay, honey," he told her softly. He'd been angry before, but it faded into nothing in the face of the possibility of one of his daughters distressed.

She retreated from him as she always did, backing up a few steps as if she somehow wanted to be out of range. "I brought him to annoy you," she admitted.

The flare of anger collided with the brief pang of despair at the thought that she could be afraid of him, and fizzled into a soggy mess of misery at the bottom of his stomach. "I kind of gathered that, Ellie," he said, with a dry smile that wasn't really much of one at all. He lowered his head and sighed. "And I'm sorry, too. I know I... I make things difficult for you, and I'm sorry." He shook his head helplessly. "If I haven't... I haven't been there for you, I-"

"That's not true, dad," she retorted, sounding startled. And suddenly his frustrated anger was back. Why could she never give him a clear signal, for God's sake?

"Then dammit, why do you always run from me? You never talk to me, Ellie! How am I supposed to know what you want?"

"Well, I don't know what you want from me!" she suddenly yelled back. "You never- I never know what you expect! How am I supposed to know how to do anything right if I don't know what you want?"

"I just want... to be your father," he said brokenly. "Why can't... why won't you let me do that?" His voice cracked down the ragged end of the spectrum into despair. He was just so tired, he kept trying and trying and nothing ever worked, nothing ever got through...

Ellie was shaking her head, small tears beginning to trickle down her cheeks. "Dad... how could you... how could you even think that? How could you ever think that?"

He was startled but gratified as she suddenly threw herself against him, sobbing like a little child. He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her close, and buried his face in her hair.

"I love you honey," he said softly, hearing the tears in his own tone. "I love you so much..."

She sounded as if she might have been going to return his words, but she choked on them instead, and clung to him all the more tightly. He rocked her like a little girl and patted her back, remembering simpler times when a hug from daddy had been all his daughters had ever needed to set the world to rights.

Donna poked her head back into the main hall, and found it near deserted. She spotted the president sitting quietly with Ellie, but something in their posture and the way his arm rested on her sleeve as they talked dissuaded her from interrupting.

Instead, she crossed to where CJ stood watching the pair, her head tilted to the side and a melancholy expression on her face.

"Hey, CJ."

"Hi, Donna." She smiled tiredly, her eyes still on the father and daughter across the room. Donna followed her gaze, noting how the president seemed sadder and somehow smaller than the exuberant persona he'd projected during the wedding.

CJ had been watching him all evening. In fact, she'd been watching him a lot longer than that. There was some sort of vibe going on with President Bartlet; some reason why both CJ and the First Lady, were keeping a subtle eye out for signs of cracking under unknown pressures.

Not that you had to look too far to pick a few possibilities out of the air. The usual stresses inherent in being a father of the bride. Leo's recent relapse and painful recovery. Charlie's beating a few months ago, and the constant fears that someone, somewhere, might try to finish the job before his union with Zoey could be sealed. Fears that she was relieved to see hadn't come true - although the nagging thought that it could still happen anywhen and anywhere still lingered... the way it always had, and probably always would, in the aftermath of Rosslyn.

And still that wasn't all that could be occupying the president's mind; his brush with the dangers of wilfully ignoring his MS, and the readjusted lifestyle it had forced him into. All sorts of political things she wasn't on a high enough level to know about, and plenty others she already did.

But maybe it wasn't any of those things. She hesitated. "CJ, is... is something wrong?"

CJ frowned, only now transferring her attention to the woman beside her. "With me? I'm cool," she shrugged.

And she could have left it there, but... "With... with the president. Is there-?"

CJ grimaced, and her stomach dropped. "There's... there is something," she admitted. She glanced around, and Donna didn't feel any more reassured when despite the relative emptiness of the room she said "But we probably shouldn't talk about it here."

Donna gazed at her worriedly. "It's not-?"

She couldn't finish the question. Don't let him be sick, please, don't let him be sick again, he's looking after himself, it isn't fair-

"No, it's- it's not that," CJ reassured her hastily, but she still looked grave. "There's... something that's gonna come up, and the president's not gonna have a good time of it." She hesitated, then placed her almost-empty wineglass down on the nearest table. "Come with me. I think it's time a few more people knew about this."

Donna followed her out, with her heart in her mouth.